Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishimais the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka, a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, and film director. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 but the award went to his countryman Yasunari Kawabata. His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. His avant-garde work displayed a blending...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth14 January 1925
CountryJapan
Yukio Mishima quotes about
True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.
In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails of boats anchored in a busy harbor. They were sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were. The boats' anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised.
Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result
The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
Human beings - they go on being born and dying, dying and being born. It's kind of boring, isn't it?
I am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge? Nothing, perhaps, save a few ribbons, dangling down into the void.
Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.
I had no taste for defeat — much less victory — without a fight.
Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?
Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.
...of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.
Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?
There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.
Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.